Journalist, editor, and civil rights activist, born in Marianna Township, Florida, USA. Freed from slavery in only 1865, he witnessed his father's stormy career as a Reconstructionist politician in Florida. He learned the printing trade, and when he moved to Washington, DC (1876) he worked on an African-American newspaper and became friendly with Frederick Douglass. In 1880 he moved to New York City, where for the next 34 years he worked on, founded, or edited a succession of newspapers, mostly concerned with protecting and advancing the rights of African-Americans. The most influential of these were The Globe (18824) and The New York Freeman (18847), renamed The New York Age (18911907). Because he at times criticized the Republican Party and argued for self-help among African-Americans, he was regarded by some as too conservative. But he was the first to propose the founding of the Afro-American League, and was its first chairman and later president (18903). Although lasting briefly, the League was the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was also active in founding several other African-American professional organizations, and he worked closely with Booker T Washington. For several years his career was sidetracked by a drinking problem, but by 1910 he was active again as an editor and organizer. In 19238 he edited The Negro World, the organ of Marcus Garvey's back to Africa movement. Although he would never attain the status of a major leader of the African-American community, he was recognized by many contemporaries as an important figure.
Timothy Thomas Fortune (October 3, 1856 – June 2, 1928) was an orator, civil rights leader, journalist, writer, editor and publisher. He was born during slavery in Marianna, Jackson County, Florida to Emanuel and Sarah Jane Fortune.
Early life
Fortune started his education at Marianna's first school for African Americans after the Civil War.
Education
Although he was mostly self-taught, in 1875 Fortune enrolled in Howard University to study law.
Tuskegee's Point Man
New York Journalist
When Fortune moved to New York City in 1881 and began a process whereby over the next two decades he would become known as editor and owner of a newspaper named first the Globe, then the Freeman, and finally the New York Age.
Upon arrival in New York, Fortune began working as a printer. That same year he published a book Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South. Four years later The Freeman took the new name of "The New York Age" and set out to become "The Afro-American Journal of News and Opinion".
In Chicago on January 25, 1890 Fortune co-founded the militant National Afro-American League to right wrongs against African Americans authorized by law and sanctioned or tolerated by public opinion. When it was revived in Rochester, New York on September 15, 1898, it had the new name of the "National Afro-American Council", with Fortune as President. Fortune was also the leading advocate of using Afro-American to identify his people.
With Fortune at the helm as co-owner with Emanuel Fortune, Jr. Its popularity was due to Fortune's editorials which condemned all forms of discrimination and demanded full justice for all African Americans. Fortune then gave her a job and a new platform from which to detail and condemn lynching. After a nervous breakdown, Fortune sold the New York Age to Fred R. Fortune published another book The New York Negro in Journalism in 1915.
Marcus Garvey and the Negro World
Fortune went to work as an editor at the UNIA's house organ, the Negro World, in 1923. During his tenure at the Negro World, Fortune rubbed shoulders with such literary luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, W.A.
Fortune died in 1928 at age 71 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His house in Monmouth, Red Bank, New Jersey was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 8, 1976 and the New Jersey State register of historic places on August 16, 1979.
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